


Person to Person

by asuralucier



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Deep Dish Denial, Dogsitting, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscommunication, Non-Linear Narrative, Phone Sex, Pining, Sharing a Bed, The First Film Basically Handwaved for Mangst, Trust Issues, Two Incredibly Incompetent Men Adopt a Dog, Voice Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-01-29 01:48:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21402160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: Wherein Winston and John (but mostly Winston) learn to talk honestly.
Relationships: John Wick/Winston
Comments: 11
Kudos: 104
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Person to Person

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Corvidology](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvidology/gifts).

> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Heaps of thanks to the world's best betas, flowerdeluce and ictus.

As the city of New York burned beneath him, Winston watched as the last drops of his very expensive Glenfiddich disappeared into the top of a bottom-heavy crystal tumbler. He’d won said bottle at an auction some years before and he’d been saving it for a special occasion. 

This was not that occasion. 

“Hey, come on, drink up.” Marcus raised his own glass. “This is some good shit.” 

Winston eyed him with no small amount of suspicion. “Don’t you have somewhere better to be?” 

“There isn’t a petty mafioso north of Bologna who isn’t doing his time in the trenches down on Fifth Avenue right now,” said Marcus, shrugging. “If I went, it’d be one gun too many.” What Marcus didn’t say, and what Winston also knew well enough just by looking at him, was that he was probably too drunk to be anywhere, on purpose. 

“Did Jonathan ask you?” 

“He knows better than to waste my time,” Marcus said, and Winston got the feeling that he was also being insulted somehow. “Do you remember what you said to me?” 

“I’ve said a lot of things,” Winston returned. He and Marcus had known each other upwards of thirty years and although neither of them would care to admit to it, Winston’s greatest sin, that of cowardice, was imprinted upon Marcus’s body and his mind. Maybe that was why Marcus swore so much, because Winston’s tutelage had somehow turned him into someone he summarily despised. 

“You said a man never leaves,” Marcus said. “All he can do, is put on layers and layers and layers of skin until he fucking suffocates from all the things he thinks he ought to be. But he doesn’t leave.” 

“Sounds like great advice,” Winston agreed, and reached for his own drink. 

Around four in the morning, the sharp trill of Winston’s mobile woke him from an uneasy sleep. The taste of stale whiskey thick in his mouth, and his bones stiffer than he remembered when he last left consciousness, Winston had to grope around for his phone before he found it. He appeared to be alone. The only remnant of Marcus was his tumbler (miraculously not empty) and the presence of an afghan haphazardly thrown over Winston on the sofa. 

Winston put the phone to his ear. “Yes?” 

“It’s done,” said Charon. “Given the circumstances, sir, I’m not certain how to respond to Mr. Wick’s request for a room.” 

“How is he?” 

“Upright, cognizant. I’m not sure I can give you the same answer in five minute’s time.” 

A headache was gathering at the back of his head; in time, Winston could tell it would become just another staying layer of what Marcus called “skin.” It certainly sounded like something he could have said back in the day, but Winston couldn’t remember. His memory was not what it once was. 

“If he promises not to die in the lift, then Jonathan can come up here and be protected by the Manager’s discretion.” 

Winston went and unlocked the door to the penthouse suite, and then he went to the bathroom which adjoined his bedroom to convince himself to look more awake. The cold water on his skin got him halfway there. As Winston was drying his face with a hand towel, he heard the door open and close again. And then, soft footsteps. 

“I’m not dead,” John said, by way of greeting. 

Winston went and looked for himself. Decades living the way he did, one developed interesting interpretations between what was living and what was dead. He was glad to see that John was mostly the former without stretching the imagination by much. 

“I can see that.” 

John had made himself comfortable on the sofa, having kicked the afghan to one side. His breathing was shallow and his face was gaunt and pale, skin translucent in the dark. Winston peered closely at him with a towel still in hand and ascertained that John didn’t appear to be bleeding anywhere, which meant he was possibly suffering from internal hemorrhaging. 

“That for me?” 

Winston followed his gaze to the tumbler left on the table. He fetched it for John, if only because he was afraid of him coming apart at the seams if he attempted to move an inch from the sofa. “It wasn’t. But now it is. So long as you don’t tell the doctor.” 

John took the glass from him and stared, almost transfixed as he sloshed the pale yellow liquid around the tumbler. His final estimation: “Kind of looks like piss.” 

“Nobody’s piss is worth that much,” Winston said. 

John downed the whiskey in one long gulp and put the tumbler back down on the floor. “Anyway, I won’t tell the Doc. Our secret.” 

Winston swallowed a lump in his throat that he thought might be the beginnings of a cancerous growth. He was at the age where he ought to start worrying about that sort of thing. After that, he went and phoned the doctor. 

The doctor arrived, carrying with him the acrid smell of the still burning city. He seemed to have been in the middle of something, but whatever Winston wanted in his capacity as the Manager took eminent priority. The doctor took in John sinking into Winston’s nice sofa, the state of his torn-up clothes, and finally, the tumbler. “Been drinking?” 

John said, “No.” 

Winston had a crisis, the acute kind that didn’t usually grip him so keenly at four in the morning. He said, “Yes, but only a little. It’s my fault.” 

The doctor looked at Winston, and then back at John again. “I can take it from here, sir, if you’d like to go back to sleep?” 

The offer was tempting; sleep was pulling at all of Winston’s limbs, reminding him that he wasn’t a young man anymore. But there was that other part of him, the part that knew that there were limits to a Manager’s discretion, what it could and could not give. More immediately, if Winston wanted to wash his hands of John Wick, then he only had to wait until tomorrow. 

John asked, when they were alone again, “Do you have trouble sleeping?” 

The doctor left, leaving also strict instructions for John not to do anything stupid that would disturb the fresh sutures currently holding his intestines in place. 

“Sometimes,” Winston said. He thought about lying, but there was nothing in John’s voice that implied an insult. He hadn’t yet spent enough time in Winston’s company for that sort of thing to become second nature. “I don’t mind. Don’t have much on tomorrow.” 

“The Manager doesn’t have much on tomorrow,” John laughed, and then he stopped laughing and winced instead. “Is there anything else to drink?” 

Winston eyed his drinks cabinet. “Take your pick.” 

“Have a drink with me,” John said, accurately reading Winston’s thought process. “It might help you sleep. We can drink whatever.” 

Winston’s other weakness, which Marcus also inherited exactly halfway, involved an inability to refuse John Wick anything. Most of the time, Winston thought he hid it well enough. There was only a few hours until daylight. He uncapped a bottle of cognac and fetched himself another glass from the kitchen. 

After a while, John said, “You could tell me not to go, stay in your discretion.” 

Winston suddenly found it very difficult to swallow. He put down his glass and wanted to distract himself. “Why are we having this conversation now, Jonathan?” 

“Because you’ve nothing to lose if you told me the truth, for once.” 

“You’ve performed the Impossible Task. It’s not such a simple thing, just to say you’ve changed your mind. Hell of a time to give into buyer’s remorse.” 

John said, “You once said you owned this city. _I am New York_. This. It could be nothing. It is nothing.” 

Now that, Winston remembered saying. He remembered the first time the absurd pronouncement had left his lips when he’d been a much younger man only to realize that it wasn’t exactly a bluff, wasn’t exactly a lie anymore. 

Winston sighed, “I am New York. But only because I’ve infected it. I’ve made myself an indispensable bacteria within the bowels of this city.” 

John considered this, the tip of his tongue pressed resolutely against the rim of his tumbler. “I’m not going to lie. That sounds like shit.” 

“Sometimes it is.” 

“Sometimes, I think,” John started, and then opted for hiding behind his glass once more instead. “Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be an honest man, Mr. Manager. I’m not going to be anything like you.” 

Winston was suddenly in pain, but he couldn’t tell its origins, not like before. “So long as you’re honest with yourself too. About what you’re running from.” 

John shook his head. “I haven’t forgotten a word, Winston. I’m not running from anything. I’m running towards the life I want.” 

It was a short sojourn to the couch, but it felt like it took him a lifetime to get there. Winston touched John on the shoulder, and the man glanced up at him. 

“I hope the life you want will make you happy.” 

Now John looked away. He reached up a hand to wrap tightly around Winston’s fingers, and squeezed once. “Yeah. -- Can I stay here tonight? On the couch, I mean. You heard the Doc, I’m not supposed to move.” 

Winston was suddenly tired. It was the sort of tiredness that made him want to go to sleep and never wake up. “Of course. I’ll be nearby if you need me.”

::

“Can I sit here?”

It was Winston’s habit to read a few papers in the dining area of the Continental. He never ate anything while he read, but his mug of tea never emptied completely. Sometimes, guests with a bone to pick or their hat in hand would find him there. He believed it was his duty as the hotel’s proprietor to be present. Something that his predecessor hadn’t exactly agreed with. 

Winston looked up and found that he’d never seen this interloper before. By virtue of how his English lilted on this side of foreign, Winston thought maybe the young man was a new Russian hire. His private opinion was that maybe Marcus could do better than picking up whatever strays that Valter Tarasov told him to, but a good education only got a man so far before he fell back into old (terrible, comfortable) habits. 

“Do you know who I am?” 

“Marcus said I should go bother the Manager in the dining area,” the man said, taking a seat and waving over a server before Winston could stop him. “You look...managerial? Is that a word?” What the man didn’t say was that Winston was the only patron currently in the dining area. 

“It is, and consider me bothered.” 

The young man still didn’t move. In his periphery, Winston saw the server tiptoeing around their table. At his assenting nod, the server came over, checked Winston’s tea (he didn’t need a refill) and handed the man a menu. 

After the server had made himself scarce, the young man turned to Winston again. “What does the Manager do all day?” 

‘What he doesn’t do is entertain inane questions,” Winston said and was glad to see that the man was at least sharp enough to pick up on the implication. He looked sheepish at once. 

“Point taken. Can we start over?” 

Winston folded his paper neatly and set it aside. “I think we’d better, yes.” 

“My name is John,” said John, extending a hand. “I’ve just started working for --”

“Valter Tarasov?” 

John looked mildly impressed. “How did you know?” 

Winston took his proffered hand. John’s knuckles were scarred from what seemed like a recent scuffle but his palm was smooth like he’d never worked a hard day in his life. He let go, and John tucked his hand immediately under the table, like he didn’t want to give anything else away about himself.

“Call it a lucky stab in the dark.” 

“Liar,” John said without even pausing to think about the accusation that had just flew out of his mouth. Instead of walking back this faux-pas, he was almost amused. “Do you always do that?” 

Before Winston could think to reply, Marcus strolled up to the table and thwacked John smartly at the back of the skull. It appeared to have had no real effect, which was probably why he did it. “Oi. I said to impress the Manager. Not to piss him the fuck off.”

John looked between the two of them, finally settling on Winston again. One side of his mouth twitched upwards, and it was hard not to take that gesture as anything but a challenge. Now things were starting to make sense. John asked, his gaze not flickering away at all, “Did I piss you the fuck off?” 

“Not really,” said Winston as he reached for his paper again, and it was the truth, this time.

::

“Sorry about the smell,” John said when he came to the door. He was upright, but it was a tossup whether the man would stay that way. Winston was suddenly hit with a mighty dose of déjà vu, that he’d been here before. It’d been so long since Winston set eyes on John Wick that the idea of the man he had in his head hardly seemed to square with the breathing specter standing in front of him. “She got me a dog. It just um, yeah.”

Some Continentals allowed dogs. The New York Continental famously did not. Winston didn’t like mess and what little he knew about dogs and their variously related four legged compatriots amounted to the fact that they made messes and didn’t exactly take responsibility for them. 

Winston stepped inside the house and discerned that there was indeed a smell, an obvious stink permeating the air. He swallowed “I’m sorry” for something more practical: “It didn’t come house-trained?” 

“I think she’s still fifty-fifty,” John said, shrugging. He ran a hand through his hair, as unkempt as Winston had ever seen it. John also looked a bit desperate for a shave, but that was neither here nor there. “Sometime she’s. We’re still getting used to each other, Daisy and me.” 

“That is a ludicrous name for a dog,” Winston said. He couldn’t help it. 

“I didn’t come up with it. You know I’m bad with names.”

As if she knew she was being talked about, a beagle peeked its little head around the archway leading to John’s kitchen. John gave a soft whistle and she padded over to him and rubbed against his ankles. John bent and scratched her behind the ears.

“Hey. Say hi to Winston.” 

Daisy gave Winston a look and then retreated into the kitchen, tail tucked between her legs. 

“I bought a car too,” John offered with a dry half smile. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with her.” 

They went for a drive in John’s new car. Winston couldn’t tell whether the Mustang was more immediately the product of grief, or if John was finally succumbing to the long inevitable: that he was no longer young and was diving headfirst as these realizations required, into a midlife crisis. But Winston played his part, and paid the car the sort of compliments that he wouldn’t be caught dead paying a woman, but for a car they’d do in a pinch. 

The other thing that was sort of terrible about driving in New York was that it couldn’t really be counted as driving. It was more that they crawled, inch by inch along a stretch of stopped up throughway into the city proper. 

“You should have said it was rush hour,” John said, tapping his thumbs listlessly on the steering wheel. “I don’t always notice, now.” 

Winston stared out the window, his hands folded neatly in his lap. At least the interior of John’s car was not rank with the smell of dog. He didn’t know where they were going, but then again, he supposed it didn’t really matter. He’d had Charon clear his diary for the day and for once in a very long time, Winston had no real plans. Once upon a time, John might have found that amusing. 

“It isn’t my place, Jonathan, not anymore. Besides, it’s not as if you can’t afford the petrol.” 

John was still staring straight ahead, but Winston could still feel his gaze prickling against the side of his temples. “I sometimes lose track of time. Maybe I should get a job.” 

“I think the hotel’s looking for a kitchen porter.” 

“I can’t tell if you’re joking.” 

Winston shrugged. “I might, and I might not be. The Continental looks for anything I tell it to. Just say the word.”

“Figures,” John said. “Why are you here? If it’s not your place to tell me even a simple thing, then why the fuck are you here, Winston?” 

His voice cracked like a bullet lodging into a piece of glass, splitting slowly. Maybe John did need a job. More likely, he needed his old job, where death was a dime a dozen. It was better that death moved fast, and not slow. Death was too often, in their line of work, translated and transmuted into something else. Into advantage, into leverage, into immediate mate-you’re-really-fucked-now-aren’t-you territory.

“I just wanted to see how you were. If that offends you, then you can let me out.” It wasn’t quite the truth, but it certainly wasn’t a lie, either. Walking was probably faster at this point, but Winston kept that to himself. 

John pursed his lips into a thin straight line, and kept on driving.

::

Marcus leaned one shoulder against the door left ajar to Winston’s office. He smelled strongly of gunpowder and something else; there was also a suspicious smudge at the cuff of his left sleeve. Given that Winston had tried painstakingly to instill in his oldest protégé the importance of presentation, he figured Marcus must come with pressing news. What Marcus said instead was, “Kid wants to know if there’s a Mrs. Manager or something floating around. Don’t worry, I smacked him for you.”

Winston felt a bit smacked around himself. He checked his watch and saw that it was later than he thought. Shame he didn’t keep any immediate temptations at the office. After that, he congratulated himself for thinking ahead and said, “Excuse me?” 

“Six-hour stakeout,” said Marcus. “We got to talk about something.” 

Winston said, “And you decided to talk about my marital status?” 

“Hey, least it’s not your sex life.” Marcus dropped into a vacant chair; his tone implied that he didn’t think Winston had one and Winston was happy enough to let the matter rest. The office was small, and when Winston wasn’t alone there, obtrusive presences were always keenly felt. 

“And what did you say?” 

“I said,” Marcus drew out the word. “Want it verbatim? Okay, here goes: John, you fucking fucker, stop thinking with your dick. That’s a cheap one way ticket to hell.” Then he said, after parsing Winston’s look like he was sussing out a target from behind his scope, “...Am I imagining things or is that you looking disappointed?” 

Winston leaned back in his ergonomically comfortable chair, mostly, to make a point. “You know, the first time you sent Jonathan down to bother me, he accused me of being a liar.” 

“He was young and he didn’t know any better,” Marcus said. “Except you know, maybe he did.”

::

“Buy you a drink?” John said, sidling up to Winston, who was conveniently between whiskeys. The statement lifted at the end, as if John just remembered he ought to be phrasing a question rather than demanding outright, that the Manager spare him some time.

It’d been a little while since Winston had seen the young man, and it took him a moment to take everything in. Everything about John was polished now, even his accent. Now he spoke as if he’d never been a day out of the five boroughs. 

“I clean up nice, don’t I?” 

Winston arched a brow at him. “Since you’re so astute, I can hardly see why you’d need me to shore up your self-esteem.” 

“I just like it,” John said. “That a crime? Come on, Winston, it’s a good day. I started a new job. I leave tomorrow.” 

“The Camorra?” This time, it wasn’t so much a stab in the dark. John’s suit, which flattered him like a second skin, was cut in the precise Italian style, with a tapered waistline for the suit jacket and similarly fitted trousers. You didn’t see this sort of cut on guests unless they had business on the continent. 

John looked surprised, and then he didn’t. He turned his attention back to the bar and ordered bourbon for himself. Then he jerked his chin grandly in Winston’s direction. “And whatever the Manager would like.” 

After the bartender recovered, he asked dutifully, “And what would the Manager like?” 

“Well,” Winston tapped one knuckle against the wood. “Whatever I was having before will do.” 

Later, when they’d tucked themselves into a booth in the corner, Winston and John watched as the two nearby tables graciously vacated themselves to give them more privacy. 

“That happen a lot?” John asked. 

“When I want it to,” Winston replied. He took a sip of his drink and felt it settle. 

“Do you carry a dog whistle around with you or something?” 

“Or something,” Winston agreed. “I’m rather averse to pets.” 

John leaned his elbows on the table. “Really? You practically run a veritable zoo.” 

After a fashion, Winston supposed that was not a completely inaccurate description of his profession and the state of his hotel. “You’re lucky you’re on company grounds, Jonathan.” 

“Or they are,” John said and let go of his glass to press the tips of his fingers against the back of Winston’s hand. Winston’s first reaction was to jerk his hand away as if he’d been struck by something hot, but in reality, cold condensation clung to John’s skin and shocked him like a stroke of lightning. “Thought of that?” 

“Sometimes,” said Winston. “What are you doing?” 

John didn’t let go of his hand. “Pushing the boat out. Apparently, they work differently over there. I’ll be kept on a tight leash and I won’t be able to do whatever I want.” 

Winston tried to think about a suitable followup maritime metaphor. Perhaps something to do with a vessel capsizing before it’d reached the sea. 

Finally, he gave up. “If that’s how you really feel, then I’d file a complaint with the Russian mob for lackluster working conditions.” 

John’s expression changed, turning an inch from affable to morose. “Winston.” 

Winston’s throat was dry and he sought refuge in his drink. Perhaps it was only his imagination, recently assaulted by reality, but the whiskey suddenly tasted sour in his mouth. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“You’re _sorry_.” John’s mouth was a compelling acrobatic movement spanning a complex spectrum from disbelief to the sort of grief that sometimes stayed on old oil paintings. “You -” He cut himself off. With some effort, John swallowed whatever words were still swimming around near the tip of his tongue and simply bowed his head. 

Winston held his breath. 

“Me too,” John said against his skin and stood, knocking back the rest of his drink in such a hurry that some of it spilled down the edge of his collar. “Anyway, see you.” 

“See you,” Winston echoed. He didn’t look away from John’s back, straight, resolute, perhaps even a bit wounded until the man had disappeared around the corner, out of his line of sight.

::

When they got back to the house, the smell from Daisy’s accident was mostly gone; Daisy herself seemed to have fallen asleep on John’s couch, her head burrowed in a pile of blankets that had been left, perhaps specifically for her use, perhaps not. 

Winston was forced to consider the possibility that he didn’t mind dogs so much if they stayed asleep and out of sight. But then the thought went into slightly distasteful territory, and then Daisy woke up at the sound of John locking his front door. 

Daisy flopped her ears excitedly as she wriggled out from underneath the blankets. She first made a bold leap off the mess of blankets onto the floor, but then seemed to skid to a halt, when she realized her owner was not alone. 

John said, gesturing, “Come here.” 

Daisy looked between John, Winston, and the blankets left on the couch. She doubled back and nosed the blankets all to one side before hopping off the couch once more to plant herself on her haunches in front of Winston. 

“What does she want?” Winston asked. He thought he knew, but the thought was absurd. Right up there with _I am New York_, which was still no less true, but no less crazy, and these days, he hardly thought about it. An absurd fact finally made flesh and indiscernible from the lies he was used to telling. 

“My guess? She wants to impress the Manager. Might have told her it was a good idea.” John’s expression was impenetrable, but Winston chose to believe it was because he himself was out of practice, and not because John had changed. In Winston’s estimation, men didn’t change; they only tried to. “I know it’s early days, but it’s never too early to start.” 

“You talk to your dog about me.” Winston fixed the beagle with a look. Unlike the last time, Daisy simply stared back, holding her ground. There was an odd intensity emanating from her, something creaturely and knowing. Hers were the sort of eyes that often gave away to Winston whether a person could make it or break it in their line of work. Somehow, it was almost fitting that it was Daisy’s eyes that now watched John around his empty house. 

“Does that bother you?” John said, from somewhere far away. 

“No,” Winston said. He bent forward and held out his hand palm up. His spine protested but only slightly. “Come.” 

Daisy seemed to think about it, and then she got up on all fours again and went to him. She put her wet nose against Winston’s skin, and then his mobile rang. 

“That’ll be my car,” Winston said, straightening up. 

“You had a car come out here during rush hour?” 

“I called it three hours ago.” Winston nodded. He wanted to reach out and clap the other man on the shoulder, something affable and friendly, even though he felt like neither of those things. “I’m glad to see you’re doing well, Jonathan.” 

“I.” John inhaled, and then let out a long breath. He said, “Yeah. Guess I am. It’s good to see you, too.” 

“And how was Mr. Wick?” Charon enquired as he handed over a pile of correspondence, mostly messages left for the Manager in his absence. As per Winston’s request and Charon’s natural fastidiousness, the messages were already arranged in order of importance. 

Winston skimmed through them and noted several messages left for him by the triad, regarding a matter that Winston certainly considered closed from his end. “I thought this was resolved.” Usually, such carelessness would have irked him and he would have thought to mention it in harsher tones, but his concierge was immediately contrite. 

“My apologies,” Charon said, reaching to pluck the offending notes out of Winston’s hands. “Something came up earlier today, I’ll make sure you are not bothered by this again.” 

“See that you do.” 

Charon’s gaze didn’t move an inch, and finally, Winston sighed. “Jonathan has bought a car and his wife has left him a dog. He’s upright, cognizant. All in all, it could be worse.” 

“An animal can be of great comfort during difficult times,” Charon agreed. 

“Sounds like someone speaking from experience,” said Winston. Before he could inquire further, Charon shifted his glance past Winston’s shoulder to let him know that a guest needed serving. A cursory glance told Winston that the individual in question was en route to a larger effort probably brewing somewhere in the city. 

If Winston were so inclined, he could probably find out when, where, who, and for what. As it were, he could hazard a guess because whispers came naturally to a man in his position. But otherwise, he found it hard to muster up any interest in inevitable failure. 

“...Sir?” 

Winston looked over at the front desk to find the guest gone and Charon waiting pointedly for some direction. 

Finally, Charon took pity on him. “Would you like me to clear your schedule tomorrow?” 

“No,” Winston said, and headed up to the penthouse suite to be alone.

::

At some ungodly hour in the morning, Winston’s mobile rang. It took him a moment to realize that what was ringing wasn’t the mobile allocated for company use. Instead, it was his private phone and the number was very, very unlisted.

Which meant that it could only be --

“Winston? -- It’s you, right?” 

Time was ticking by in all corners of the world. Having recently turned fifty, it seemed to Winston that the hands of the clock dragged through wet sand and left him feeling ever more sluggish than before. He cleared his throat, and even then, words tasted thick and strange on his tongue. “Jonathan, how on Earth did you get this number?” 

John said, after a brief pause, punctuated by thin breathing, “Winston, I almost died today, just now. The doc here says if I move around too much my spleen might burst again.” 

Winston was waking up, slowly. He had a telling stitch near his kidney and he turned over on his other side hoping to alleviate the discomfort. “You sound like you’re surprised this happens.” 

At the other end of the line, there was a sound. A sound that reminded Winston of wringing the life out of someone. He suspected it was John trying to laugh. When the younger man finally gave up on the venture, Winston felt his own shoulders go lax with a strange sort of relief. “Of course, it’s happened. But not...this bad.” 

Winston checked his watch blearily in the dark and wondered if he should be on the next flight out to Rome. 

Instead, he said, “Should we not have let you let you off your leash?” 

John made an unhappy noise and responded, “If I wanted to get my head chewed off for this, I would have rang Marcus.” 

“All right,” Winston assented with his eyes closed. “Why did you call me?” 

“Told you, didn’t I?” John sighed. “I almost died. Maybe you’re the one person I wanted to speak to before I kick it. Before I die.” 

After he recovered, Winston said, “You still might, by the sounds of it.” 

“All the more reason.” There was a quiet clinking noise at the other end, as if John had haphazardly knocked a glass against a table’s edge. And then, there was the unmistakable sound of John pouring himself a drink. “Anyway.” 

“Anyway. Should you be doing that?” 

“It can be our secret,” John said, and if Winston tried hard enough, he thought he could picture it, John looking smug, even though he had no right to. “Besides, it’s not like anybody’s responsible for me like before. I’ve been let off the leash, like you said. I bet you’re good at keeping secrets.” 

For all the years Winston had known John Wick, he was almost certain that this was the most John had ever said in his company. Clearly, this was not John’s first tipple. It’d been a long time since Winston had had any trouble with his own spleen, but he remembered his last encounter being particularly unpleasant. He couldn’t exactly grudge John this small, if medically unsound, vice. 

“Of course I am,” said Winston. “But only because I have no one to tell them to.” 

“That’s bullshit.” 

“You are entitled to your opinion, Jonathan.” 

John let out a long hissing breath between his teeth, and then swallowed. “Let’s talk about something else.” 

“That might be an idea,” Winston agreed. 

For a long moment, John didn’t say anything after that. But before a fresh anxiety took hold of Winston again, John said, “I hate it here. In Rome.” 

“I imagine it’s hard to really enjoy yourself when you’re distracted by a ruptured spleen.” Going back to sleep seemed unlikely at the juncture, so Winston reached over and turned on the lamp on the end table beside his bed. Another find at an auction; he had a fine eye for these things. He had the same propensity, he thought, towards people, but people were much less inclined to stay on a shelf. Case in point: 

“That’s not what I mean,” John groused. Winston thought he heard the soft creaking of a mattress as the man settled, or tried to. 

“I know.” 

John laughed, almost as if he were someone else. “You don’t have to be scared of me, Mr. Manager. I’m piss drunk. Probably won’t even remember this conversation. If I start bleeding again, I’ll most likely leak booze instead of blood.”

Winston made a sound of his own; he didn’t think it could pass muster as _laughter_, but at least it was an attempt. He tossed aside the duvet that previously covered him, and was almost glad for the cold draft that reminded him that he was alone, and that John was still stuck somewhere that he apparently hated. Rome was not Winston’s favorite place in the world, but it was serviceable enough on most days. 

Now Winston couldn’t help himself. He said, “I’m flattered to be the person you forget you want to be speaking to after your near-death experience.” 

“I’ll remember that,” John said quickly. “I don’t need to remember that. I’ll just know it. So, it won’t matter, Winston.” 

Some mornings, it was Charon himself who came up to Winston’s quarters and opened all of his curtains. It seemed like such a mundane task, one entirely unsuited to a person just a hairbreadth below the upper echelons of Management, but Charon, like everyone else, had his reasons for doing things and it seemed rude to pry. 

Despite his previous intentions, Winston took one look at the faint pinkish red light of the coming sunrise, and decided to go back to bed. He’d earned it. 

“Jonathan.” 

“Hm.” 

“You should probably try to get some sleep. This too, shall pass. It will pass quicker if you sleep.” 

“Can’t,” John said. In the brief pause that followed, Winston tried to imagine what he was up to, or indeed, if the young man was indeed as close to Death’s door as he was claiming, or had been led to believe. “I’m too wired.” 

Winston expelled a breath that he almost wasn’t aware of holding. He’d been prepared for the reality that he was going to have to navigate two conversations side by side, but it looked like it was only the one, this time. 

“Are you lying down?” 

More shuffling. “Yeah.” 

“Why don’t you just,” Winston started and stopped. He was about to do something inadvisable, which happened from time to time, even now. Most of the time, though, he wasn’t nearly as personally invested. Finally, Winston cleared his throat and started over. “Why don’t you just close your eyes and listen to the sound of my voice?” 

John said, with a little catch in his own voice, “And do what?” 

“I have no idea,” Winston said. “I’m in New York. I haven’t the faintest what you get up to.”

“Is that the truth?” On the other end, there was no mistaking the familiar rustle of fabric, or perhaps, even the pull of a zipper, sliding down slowly. While Winston was conscious of the terrible state John must be in, he couldn't help but think of the way the young man looked right at that moment. Dark and inviting, _come touch me touch me touch me. I fucking dare you._ “I imagine you could find out.” 

Insinuation was a young man’s game. It always had been. It’d been a godsend to Winston, when he’d been younger, to be good at it. To imagine all the things he could have, and then to lose that because he simply hadn’t needed such an imagination, anymore. He had to take a moment, steady himself. “Yes, I imagine I could. Will you listen to me?” 

“I always listen to you,” John said plainly. “Even when you’re full of shit, Winston.” 

That did something, a very old something, something else Winston thought he’d left behind with the follies of youthful indiscretion. Winston was suddenly reminded of Marcus saying to him that at least he (Marcus) and John had left Winston’s sex life well alone, that once. 

“Don’t speak like that, Jonathan, please,” Winston said. “Speak like yourself. He learned to.” 

“I --” John cut himself off. “Who did you call? When you almost died.” 

Winston slid a hand down the length of himself. He was wearing a robe and only underwear beneath. Hardly a chore. Winston felt his dick warm not only with an inevitable push of live blood, but also with a strange sort of closeness, the sort of intimacy that he’d been long primed to avoid. Not least of which because he’d been taught avoidance as a virtue, but that it was also in his veins, as much a part of him as his fluctuating heartbeat. If there was something that had yet to take in John, it was that he’d yet to learn the advantages of being alone. 

“What makes you think I called anyone?” 

“Everyone does,” John said. 

“I never did,” Winston told him and it was the truth. “I don’t think I could live with it, the embarrassment, if I’d made it out alive.” 

John laughed, a genuine laugh this time, throaty, full, and low without the vestiges of pain clinging to it, and the sound made Winston twitch in all the wrong ways. It was too bright and honest. It had no place in the world he knew. John was too stubborn to be trampled and eaten, no doubt the world would find another way to break him. If not his body, then certainly his spirit, one day. That was the nature of time. It certainly gave, but most of the time, it took. 

“I’m just so fucking happy to be alive,” John said. “I couldn’t care less if. -- Never mind. I’m meant to be listening to you, Winston. Just...talk to me. About anything, it doesn’t matter.” 

Winston did, and over time, as the intimacy of words overtook the more menial urgency down south, he almost forgot he was holding his dick. He spoke about things he’d long forgot, and it was easier to recount embarrassments when he could see them as mistakes. Mistakes to inform a future wherein Winston fucked up slightly less, or hoped to. But in the end, it’d turn out all the same. More of the same. 

“Winston.” 

“Yes?” 

There was now, a telling edge to John’s voice as he said Winston’s name, a little rough, a little strained, and his breathing, particularly his inhales, had taken on an uneven rhythm, halting, wanting. If Winston really listened, he could hear something else. 

Oh. 

Suddenly, Winston was newly aware of his erection filling out in his grip. Somehow, inexplicably in time with the sounds that John was increasingly less shy about making. And yet all of it, the heady air around him from Rome, it still felt wrong to indulge, to have such a moment of honesty wasted. He let go of himself and grabbed a fistful of his bedsheet instead. 

“Shall I keep talking, Jonathan?” When John made an agreeable monosyllable, Winston decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “I was just thinking, that I might have spoken a little too hastily when you asked to push the boat out.” 

John said, his breathing noticeably quicker than before, too. “Really?” The word, the world hung in the balance. “What does that mean, that you think about it? Tell me the truth. That’s all I fucking want.” 

“I think about it from time to time,” Winston admitted. “More than I should. That’s the truth.”

"...Fuck," John expelled that swear in a rush. "Say that again. Say you fucking think of me."

Winston's world, big and sprawling and most of it out of his control, though he'd like to think otherwise, suddenly got very small. All it was, was John Wick desperately fucking himself into his fist on a hotel bed. Over and over and over again. "I fucking think of you, Jonathan. I fucking think of you." 

That might have done it, pushed John over his precipice. The moan that came over the line just then made Winston bite down on his own tongue to stay quiet. He didn't want to miss a moment of this to his own indulgences. Then John made a thoroughly obscene sound at the back of his throat that connected with Winston’s gullet. And then Winston greedily sucked up all the other noises and swears that left the young man’s mouth, as if he hadn’t breathed in years. Not properly, anyway.

::

“It’s only kibble.” Winston couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with a dog. Still, Daisy looked unconvinced and refused to move from her perch. “Go on. My concierge swears by it.”

“I never pegged Charon for a dog person,” said John, his voice wafting in from the kitchen along with the surprisingly pleasant aroma of rosemary and garlic. Who knew the Baba Yaga was competent with a spatula outside of trying to shove the implement down some poor bugger’s throat. But five years was a long time. Enough for a man to become someone else. Someone who he himself barely recognized in the mirror. Winston wondered, briefly, who it was that John saw in the mirror in the mornings. 

Winston went and joined John in the kitchen. He heard the soft padding of paws behind him. He looked down, and Daisy stared back up at him. Then she went and did her due diligence around John’s ankles. “Charon is a man of bottomless talent. Add to that, the fact that he’s always preferred the company of animals to people, well.” 

“And you don’t?” John glanced over at him, the faintest of smiles tugging at the edge of his mouth. “Never could tell the difference, anyway.” 

“Maybe it’s better that you don’t; knowing the difference makes a man vain, that wouldn’t suit you at all.” Winston stepped in closer to the glowing hob, where John had a pan going. “Pork?” It looked like tenderloin. 

“Yeah,” John nodded. He poked at the edge of a seared disk and upon finding it apparently satisfactory, he lopped off a corner of it with a knife, checked its temperature, and then bent, offering it to Daisy on the flat of his palm. “It’s not a good look, offending the Manager.” 

“I take no offense,” said Winston. “But if you feed her like that, then it’s no wonder.” To say nothing at all of John pointedly rewarding bad behavior. 

John straightened up and rolled his shoulders. Then he rinsed his hands and dried them with a nearby dishtowel. “Special occasion. It’s not as if I have people around, usually Daisy gets fruit. Or cereal.” 

Winston said, “Fruit?” Maybe it was too much to suggest that John actually buy some actual dog food. Charon’s instincts, when he’d suggested Winston bring some on this visit, were on point as per. 

“Long story,” said John, a touch sourly, and left it at that. 

“How about her family?” Winston asked, when they settled in later at the table for the meal. They sat shoulder to shoulder instead of opposite each other. Maybe John couldn’t stand to be looked at. He still needed a shave. Part of Winston’s query was to be polite. Part of it was to satiate his own curiosity, which was markedly less so. 

“What about her family?” 

The emptiness that permeated John's house defied any presence of family. But then again, every time Winston looked at John or indeed, thought about him, John wasn't a man he recognized.

“Do they come see you?” 

“I haven't seen anyone since the funeral,” John said. “So, months. Kind of. But that’s...fine. I don’t mind it. I’m.” 

Winston waited. Daisy, ever watchful for any scraps, waited too, by John’s feet. 

“Helen made me into a real person, I think,” John said, quietly. “I don’t really know.” 

“You were never a real person, Jonathan,” Winston told him, but not cruelly, he thought. It was simply the truth. “She was simply an opportunity for you to tell yourself the sort of lies you seem to want to keep telling yourself. ”

John regarded him for what seemed like years. He said, after putting down his fork and knife, as though the very existence of these utensils offended his very (lonely) life and ability to live, “I don’t lie like that. Not anymore.” His throat bobbed, as if he was working hard to swallow something that wouldn’t stay down. 

Winston said, “All right?” He wanted to reach out to touch, to touch any part of John. But he knew he couldn’t, so he didn’t. 

“I will be.” John looked away from him. Instead, he swept his eyes over the remains of their dinner. He picked up a piece of fatty pork on Winston’s plate and gave a soft whistle. Daisy went to him, nuzzling his knee before looking up at her owner expectantly. “Like everything else, it takes time, no? You told me that, once.” 

“May I?” Winston asked. A sudden bout of what might be called sentimentality struck him in his veins. He was not going to think too hard about it. 

John raised one eyebrow, but otherwise, didn’t react. He handed over the bit of meat and Daisy now looked between them, still waiting. 

“Come,” Winston said, gesturing, proverbial hat in hand. Daisy didn’t need to be told twice; she took the scrap into the kitchen, very careful not to drip any grease onto John’s carpet on her way. 

They both watched her go, and John said, “Thought you said that was rewarding bad behavior.” 

“Special occasion,” Winston returned with the mildest of smiles. “Isn’t it? Otherwise, Jonathan, how would we live?” 

“Badly, I suppose,” John said. He reached for Winston’s hand, and then the motion stuttered at the last moment, but it was the same push of sentimentality that compelled Winston to reach for him in turn.

::

“Have you seen the kid?” said Marcus, dispensing with hellos. He’d long since given up being polite with Winston and their relationship didn’t suffer for it. “I said I’d meet him down here.”

Winston looked up from his paper and decided his tea needed a refill. He waved over a server who was lurking nearby at a respectable distance. He waited until they were alone again before speaking. “I didn’t know Jonathan was back from Rome.” 

“He’s being sent home to _convalesce_.” Marcus’s mouth twisted -- half amused, half annoyed as all hell -- “Do you really not know? I’m surprised Julius hasn’t called to chew you out about signing off on a lame duck. You know he’s been the Camorra’s little lapdog for years.” 

That surprised Winston too, but he kept it to himself. He changed the subject. “Whatever the case, Julius hasn’t called me. And there he is now.” 

Marcus turned, and both of them watched John Wick approach Winston’s table. He had the slightest of limps and there was still a cut, old, but ugly, right above his temple. It was still up in the air, whether it was going to scar for life. 

John said, “Hi, Winston.” 

“Hello, Jonathan.” 

Winston was aware that the last time they spoke, they hadn’t really spoken. He watched as Marcus very pointedly missed the point, and proceeded to rip John a new one about _getting fired from Rome._

“But I didn’t get fired from Rome.” John stuck his hands in his pockets and heaved a sigh. 

“Like I give a shit,” Marcus scowled. “Point is. You’re _here_, John. Not there, and that reflects badly on New York.”

John avoided Marcus’s eyes and looked towards Winston again. “Does it?” 

Winston deferred to his cup of tea and reached for the teapot. “Julius hasn’t been in contact with me.” He’d do well to remind himself that he didn’t have a dog in this fight. At least, not until he’d heard from Rome, and Winston had plenty of reason to believe that he wouldn’t. “What are you doing tonight, Jonathan?” 

Marcus started, “We’ve got.” 

But John was quicker. “I’m not doing anything.” 

Winston drank more tea and tried to remember the last time he’d acted so spuriously. He didn’t exactly have to look far. “Good. Come see me. After seven, we can have dinner.” 

The next time Winston laid eyes on John, it was when John showed up outside the penthouse at precisely one minute after seven in the evening. He’d changed from his earlier suit, into a getup that hardly looked appropriate on company grounds, where everyone was more or less in some variation of lounge casual. Dark denim, leather jacket, and not the desperate kind, the sort that led people astray in films. Not that Winston was particularly beholden to the cinema. 

Whatever the case, the casual clothes suited him. 

John said, shedding his jacket smoothly like a snake shedding skin, “You’re a busy man, Mr. Manager. Thought it best not to keep you waiting.” Underneath was a white t-shirt, tight enough to be obscene if Winston was willing to entertain such thoughts. At this point, it was still up in the air. 

“And you’d think right,” Winston said. Before he could say anything else to that effect, John had him pinned against the wall next to the door. It was good to see that while John’s reflexes were top of the line. This was the closest that Winston had come to experiencing the prowess of the Baba Yaga for himself. But his was a seasoned eye, seasoned enough to wonder if John knew that there were two sides to the moniker he’d been given.

One was straightforward enough. The nightmare’s nightmare. The other, calling to more cultured minds, perhaps a picture of a little wizened crone, small-eyed and weak-limbed. 

“When you do think,” amended Winston, quietly. “What do you think you’re doing, Jonathan?” 

John’s jaw worked, the motion segued without any trouble down to the toned muscled arms. Also too close to Winston’s person. “So maybe dinner can wait,” he said. “Maybe we can eat something else first.” 

“That’s,” Winston started, “forward.” 

“If I don’t ask, I don’t get,” John said. But he held his ground, not moving away, nor did he move any closer to Winston. “Something else I’ve learned.” 

The resolve belonging to a lesser man might have bent, snapped and gave in. But Winston wasn’t that. Though he wasn’t exactly above being tempted in its entirety either, so he allowed himself another moment before extricating himself and stepping away from John. A new tenseness seemed to settle, weighted on John’s shoulders, more or less yoking him to an unpleasant reality, just as heavy. 

_Carpe diem_. Winston looked to tighten the noose. “Do you really think that’s what I called you up here to do? So we could fall into bed together, and then. What?” 

“So you do want to fuck,” John said. 

“I.” Sometime ago, perhaps not long after he’d hung up the phone that once, Winston had prepared himself for this inevitable moment, and yet for all of his foresight, it’s nothing like he’d thought it would be. Something about John Wick belied all preparation. Any other point and time, Winston might have admired it. 

For now, it was in Winston’s best interest to change the subject. “Did you really tell Marcus you were fired from Rome? He’s not without friends in the city.”

John stood his ground, set his jaw. “You were there when I said that’s not what happened.” 

“So what happened, Jonathan?” 

In their world, there were rules. Rules set by the High Table, and those rules were often either broken or reinforced by a Manager's discretion. The particular limits of said discretions were perennially up for debate. Unless a man was content to contend with all of this invisibility, all this uncertainty, he’d never get anywhere. 

If there was anything that was getting clearer by the minute, it was that John was never going to be slumming it in Management. 

“Nothing. I asked Gianna if I could come back to New York. I haven’t exactly...she’s agreed to give me some time, that’s all.” 

“To do what?” 

John’s mouth twisted into something unpleasant. He finally moved away from his post near the wall and sat down on one of the couches. “Not to fuck the Manager. Happy? Or maybe I didn’t want to be under the thumb of some twenty-year-old princess. I don’t know. Lots of reasons.” 

“She’s doing better than you,” Winston pointed out, and not just to be funny, either. “I’m sure Miss D’Antonio at least knows how not to piss off Upper Management.” 

“Anyway.” John shrugged, the gesture forceful enough to signal an end to the subject. “I don’t want to talk about that.” 

Winston sat down too, on the couch opposite. “I do, and I don’t. I know that’s probably not what you’d like to hear.” 

John looked at him anew, eyes sharp with cautious curiosity. “I don’t know what I’d like to hear.” 

“I don’t want to be just an indiscretion, Jonathan. As I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be,” Winston said. “You have a career and a reputation to think about. And an indiscretion isn’t worth that. No indiscretion is worth that. Not me. Not you.”

Slowly, an understanding seemed to flood John’s entire system. He said, leaning back with his bare, toned arms raised high above his head, as if he was daring Winston to change his mind. “You’re really killing me.” 

“Perhaps to get you near death again so we may speak on the phone.” Winston smiled thinly. 

“Low blow,” John said, mouth twitching to mirror his expression, but the youthful brightness of his eyes still separated them by decades. 

“When you get to be my age.” Winston stood and he felt his knees nearly crack with the effort. He suddenly knew that he was as old as he probably sounded. “I’m going to order us some dinner.” 

“People know I’m up here,” John said, eyes still trained steadily on Winston in the dark. “They’ll probably think we’re fucking. Seems a waste, don’t you think?” 

No doubt they’d be thinking that in any other establishment, where the kitchen and housekeeping staffs were prone to chinwagging without the promise of swift consequence. Winston hardly tolerated such behavior at the Continental and besides. “I have a reputation too, Jonathan. They won’t think that.” 

John shifted beside him on the mattress. Winston was conscious of the space between them, but so far, John hadn’t reached for him or made any other attempt to violate what Winston now thought as no man’s land. “Well, they should. Should I worry about you?” 

“I’m flattered that you do.” 

“I think you could do a little bit better than be flattered,” John said. “See? I can play your game, Mr. Manager.” 

“It’s hardly a game,” Winston said. “The moment you think it is, is the moment that...I’m sure I don’t need to tell you.” 

“Guess not.” John exhaled. It was quiet enough, but the noise was amplified in the otherwise silent room. “What’s the Impossible Task?” 

Two words Winston hadn’t heard spoken next to each other for a very long time. “What it says on the tin.” That was an answer, and it bought him some time. He liked things efficient. “Why?” 

“It’s why I almost died. The man attempting it. He was less lucky than I was.” 

“People don’t attempt the Impossible Task because they have somewhere to go. Certainly, that’s what they all have to think,” Winston said. “They attempt the Impossible Task because they have nowhere else to go.” 

“But is it true that,” John began and stopped again. “Do you ever think about it?” 

“I like being New York too much,” said Winston and it wasn’t until the words left his mouth, he thought that the sentiment sounded absurd. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t true. “I mean, no. Not seriously.” 

John said, “What?” 

“Never mind,” Winston said. “It’s a long complicated thing. Something I used to tell myself when I was younger.”

“I’d aim bigger,” John said. “I am the whole of the Eastern Seaboard. I am New fucking England.” His mouth curled slightly. “You can keep New York.” 

“And so you should.” Finally, Winston stretched out a hand and pressed his fingers against John’s mouth. The young man held perfectly still. 

“I”ll go back to Rome tomorrow,” John spoke very softly against his skin. 

“That’s tomorrow,” said Winston. “For now, try to get some sleep. You look like you need it.”

::

For a long time, neither of them dared move. Winston didn’t think they even breathed. And yet it seemed like time swelled in the silence that now transpired between them, as if it was racing all at once, all around them, finally to catch up.

The man who was standing beside him now, clinging to his hand for some semblance of sense, was miles and miles away from the cocksure young thing that had approached him at his table in the Continental’s dining area. Winston could have told him then and there, that “you look managerial?” was hardly a way to endear oneself to a Manager. 

Except Winston didn’t fancy himself just any Manager, and John Wick wasn’t just an ordinary hitman. He was a nightmare’s nightmare, at home among the scum of the earth, and yet somehow at the same time, was un-moored and little more than a ghost in civilized society. 

If John squeezed his fingers any more tightly, Winston was sure that he was going to come away with broken joints. 

But then John let go of him and let out an exhale through his nose in the same breath. “I think I see your car outside.” 

_”I could tell it to go,”_ was on the tip of Winston’s tongue. Instead, he said, “Seems so.” 

“Is Charon driving? I could thank him for the kibble,” said John. Winston felt very keenly, that John was trying to play him at his own game again, actually saying something else. 

“I’ll take a message. Sure he’ll be thrilled.” Winston was halfway expecting his feet to fail him as he attempted to move, but somehow, his limbs worked and obeyed exactly as much as they needed to, and it vaguely felt as if he were treading through water instead of walking on solid ground. “Thank you for dinner.” 

Winston got to the door, still unsure of whether he was going to make it out in one piece, and more importantly, if he was going to make it out as himself. 

“I lied,” John said, from somewhere behind him. 

“About what?” 

“There was something else.” John stepped up next to him in front of the door, like he was afraid that Winston would escape from him before he said his piece. “Dinner was just me buttering you up.” 

Winston raised an eyebrow. 

“Could you…” John stuck his hands into his pockets and looked at him in the eye exactly halfway. “Look after Daisy for a little while? I need to go somewhere. Can’t really take her with me.” 

“Where are you going?” There was a part of Winston that suddenly thought the worst. 

“I don’t see Helen’s family,” said John. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t call. Or write. Or. They go on this huge vacation to the Poconos every year. The way things are going, I should probably show my face. Assure everyone I’m not dead. I keep getting very aggressive invitations.” 

Winston thought, a little uncharitably, _no, just playing at it, biding your time, then_. Out loud: “Poconos means you’re going to be mostly outdoors, no? Exactly where a dog might feel at home.” 

“You’d think.” John’s mouth lifted at one side, affecting something close to uncharitable. “Some of the kids have allergies. I always think that’s why she gave me a dog. So I wouldn’t have to, you know.” He shook himself. “Anyway, I don’t have anybody else I can ask.” 

“You know I don’t allow animals on hotel premises, Jonathan.” 

“Yes you do,” John said. “I won’t be gone long. And it’s not as if you’re not without the Manager’s discretion.” 

Winston looked longingly towards the door. “It’s also the Manager’s discretion to refuse service. If he so wishes. And the protections of the hotel technically no longer extend to you, as a civilian.” 

“Please.” 

As if summoned by some invisible cue, Daisy appeared around the corner and padded over to where Winston stood. She sat, and stared until Winston felt his colon rearrange itself. 

“Very well,” Winston said. “Call Charon and have it arranged. I’ve got to be going.” 

“Are we revisiting our animal policy, sir?” Charon said, as he bent to arrange a swathe of blankets, that Winston vaguely recognized from John’s sofa. There was a surety in his movements, not that Winston’s concierge was ever unsure about anything. He wouldn’t have stood for it. 

“No.” 

Charon looked towards the carrier beside the door, where Daisy was still curled inside, her dark stare as baleful as Winston had ever seen it. “She’s not very well socialized, is she?” 

Winston said, “Well.” He glanced down at his watch for something to do. Right about now, John would be arriving at the Poconos. Alive, alone. _Sans_ dog. At least he had a nice car.

Sighing, Winston looked between Charon and John Wick’s dog. “There’s a joke in there somewhere.” Or an insult. 

“If you’d like,” said Charon, straightening up too. Remarkably, he kept a straight face. John had once put it best, that the New York Continental was akin to a veritable zoo and served all kinds. A dog frightened of her now unfamiliar surroundings was possibly very low on the scale of what a concierge could be surprised by. 

After a moment or two, Daisy peeked her head out of the carrier and nosed the carpet of Winston’s sitting room with what seemed like a determined curiosity. Winston was feeling hopeful about this development up until the point where she circled a particular spot by the pile of blankets that Charon had meticulously arranged, and promptly relieved herself. 

Charon deftly stepped out of the way of the puddle that had formed by his feet and said, “I will call Housekeeping.” 

Winston said, “No, you won’t.” 

“Very good, sir. I won’t. But if you’ll excuse me.” 

Once Charon had closed the door of the penthouse, Winston trained his attention on Daisy, who sat morosely near her pile of blankets, pointedly avoiding Winston’s gaze. 

“Never do that again.”

No reaction. 

Finally, Winston held out his hand, a peace offering. Daisy put one paw in front of the other until she made it over to where he was standing. “Jonathan is probably having a worse time than we are.” 

Now she looked up. Winston put his hand on top of her head. “You miss him, don’t you?” In reply, she put her wet nose against his palm once more. “Me too.” 

Two days later, John rang his private mobile as Winston was getting ready for bed. “How’s the Poconos?” 

“Noisy,” said John. And it indeed sounded noisy. Lively. Like a world carved away from everything else. “We’re playing a board game.” 

“Ah.” 

“It’s so,” John paused, and Winston could see it, his eyes darting from corner to corner, assessing any potential threats, “ -- fucking normal. Sorry. There are kids around.” 

“Yes, the kids with the dog allergy.” Winston sat down at the edge of his bed and reached for his nightcap. “Daisy’s fine, by the way. She did destroy my couch. And made a mess of my carpet.” 

“I can buy you a new couch,” said John. “We can negotiate a new carpet.” 

“You don’t know what I like.” Winston sipped his drink and rolled the whiskey around in his mouth before he swallowed. “I was meaning to get rid of it anyway.” 

“Or maybe I do,” John said, “know what you like. Hang on.” What followed was a series of muffled conversation, which Winston only half listened to, then John was back on the line. “It’s my turn. We’re playing Guess Who. Hell of a game for me, if you get what I mean. I should probably go.” 

“I know who you are, Jonathan,” said Winston, mostly without thinking. 

“See you when I get back.” Then John hung up. 

“What’s happened to your…” Marcus trailed off briefly as he took in the state of Winston’s living room. The carpet was mostly salvaged, thanks to Charon’s quick (not to mention discreet) thinking from a few days before. But the absence of one of Winston’s couches was profound. “The hell do you want, anyway?” 

“She’s due for a walk,” Winston said. Daisy peered out from Winston’s bedroom. “And I have a meeting. As omniscient as I am, I can’t manage to be in two places at once. I’d ask Charon, but he’s similarly occupied.” 

“John’s dog is here in your hotel.” Marcus stared at her with such force that she gave a little whimper and retreated back into the safety of the bedroom once more, out of sight. “Have I missed something? I have. What the fuck.” 

“Jonathan’s back tomorrow. It was no trouble.” There were some lies that proved too much even for someone as seasoned as Winston. He amended his statement. “Not much trouble.” 

“Winston, you hate dogs.” 

Winston said nothing. 

Marcus didn’t appear to be much of a dog person either, but he picked up the lead that John had left for her walks and gave it a smart snap that made Winston think the man knew his way around such accessories for entirely unsavory reasons that hadn’t anything to do with dogs. Marcus gave a sharp, no-nonsense whistle and Daisy emerged, head down, and laid herself at his feet. 

Marcus said, “Maybe she’s gone and pissed in your room.” 

“Well. You are five minutes late,” said Winston. 

“You do _not_ get to pin this one on me.” Marcus clipped the lead onto Daisy’s collar without much fanfare and gave an experimental tug. He straightened up once again and Winston could see it in his face, the push and pull between whether to say anything more. 

Winston saved him the trouble; he was short on time, not to mention patience. “Say it, or you’re going to stew on it and your head will explode.” 

Marcus stewed on whatever he was going to say some more, before he expelled a breath noisily through his nose. He said, “So will yours. Come on, mutt.” Daisy stood to attention and trotted carefully beside him as Marcus went to the door. “She'll never be trained properly, what with the two of you being soft on her.” 

John and his Mustang returned from the Poconos looking only slightly worse for wear. Apparently, John was involved in a fender bender on way back into the city proper and now he was going to be without proper transport for a week. Aurelio promised to put a rush on it. 

“But I guess I’m stuck here. ‘Til then.” 

“There’s always the subway,” Winston said. “If you’re desperate.” 

They sat together on the one remaining couch and Winston was suddenly newly aware of everything about John, as if he’d only just met him and as if the youthfulness that Winston once admired immensely about him never left him at all. 

John glanced at him slightly sideways. “Are you trying to get rid of me, Winston?” 

“When has that ever worked?” 

Daisy was snuggled in by the crook of John’s arm, staring too. Winston thought he’d come to know her better in the time John had been gone, but he was never going to admit to it. 

“Maybe it hasn’t,” John admitted. 

Winston reached forward and kissed him. The sort of kiss he’d been brewing in the back of his head for years and yet somehow now it was real. Chaste and almost coaxed slowly into existence at long last. When John recovered from the initial shock, they kissed again, and this time it was better. 

“I’m almost seventy,” Winston murmured against his jaw. He had no idea if John was keeping track of such things, but it seemed prudent to mention. 

“And I’m not really a real person,” John said, a touch flatly. “Pretty sure I have you beat.”

“Maybe that was harsh of me.” Winston pressed his thumb against John’s lovely, ageless cheekbones and watched as John’s eyes fluttered shut. “I could revisit that opinion. Seeing as we have so much to talk about. We've got the time.”

“We do,” John said. All at once, when he opened his eyes once more, Winston was suddenly less afraid of being seen as he was. “I’m listening.”


End file.
